Through the principle of superposition in quantum systems we can
create useful memory components that are on the scale of an atom or
smaller. These quantum memory registers may facilitate exponential
computational speed increases by taking advantage of quantum
parallelism.

Peter Shor has developed an algorithm which makes factoring large
numbers tractable, and in doing so has drawn great attention to the
field of quantum computing. Due to Shor's algorithm, we may someday
have to turn to other means of encrypting data than currently
employed.